19th CENTURY PAINTINGS
 

Oil on canvas. View of a town crossed by a wide navigable canal, on which a church overlooks on the left, while a civic tower stands out in the background; numerous popular figures enliven the scene. Relined, the painting has a marked crack. It is presented in a period frame.

Family Lunch 1802

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left. Genre scene of popular taste, it portrays a bourgeois family preparing to have lunch: the father, already seated at the table, is about to bless the meal, while his wife and son, standing, follow the prayer. Little is known about Charles Christophe Coventry, an English painter of whom we know mainly genre scenes of popular settings, such as this one. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a period frame.

Oil on canvas. The protagonists of the scene are a girl and a boy dressed in traditional Tyrolean clothes, a region to which the setting also refers, with its characteristic mountain chalets with flower-filled balconies; the girl, sitting knitting, joyfully receives the embrace of the boy, who takes her by surprise from behind. The pictorial style and subject matter refer to the production of some Tyrolean artists who tried their hand at popular and traditional genre scenes, including for example Hugo Kauffmann, specialized in popular interior scenes in costume. The painting, on the first canvas, shows traces of patches. It is presented in a gilded frame in style.

Oil on canvas. At the bottom right are the unidentified signature (partially erased), the location Rome and the date 1841. The portrait of this pair of women, presumably mother and daughter, is singular: the older woman is dressed strictly in black, in mourning, and her gaze is lost in the distance, chasing memories of her life, detaching herself from the present; the young woman, on the other hand, at the centre of the scene, is elegant and lively, in a pink dress and a precious white and gold satin cloak, with a white fur collar, a bunch of flowers in her hand; although leaning on the shoulder of the older woman, whom she holds under her arm with a confidential but also protective attitude, she displays a confident and determined expression, staring straight ahead towards the viewer, or perhaps reaching out towards the future that awaits her. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a period frame.

View of Corfu with a Small Church and a Monk

Watercolor on paper. Signed lower left. Angelos Giallinas, born in Corfu, was known for his numerous views of his native island, although his landscape production includes glimpses of Greece, other Greek islands, Italian and oriental cities. His watercolor glimpses are pervaded by a suspended, veiled atmosphere. The painting has slight scratches. Framed.

Glimpse of Corfu with Monk

Watercolor on paper. Signed lower left. Angelos Giallinas, born in Corfu, was known for his numerous views of his native island, although his landscape production includes glimpses of Greece, other Greek islands, Italian and oriental cities. His watercolor glimpses are pervaded by a suspended, veiled atmosphere. The painting has slight scratches. Framed.

View of Corfù

Watercolour on paper. Signed lower left. Angelos Giallinas, born in Corfu, was known for his numerous views of his native island, although his landscape production includes glimpses of Greece, other Greek islands, Italian and oriental cities. His watercolor glimpses are pervaded by a suspended, veiled atmosphere. This same view of the island was presented, in a smaller example, at a Sotheby's auction in London in 2002. The work is presented in a frame.

Oil on canvas. French school of the late 18th - early 19th century. Portrait of a gentleman in elegant bourgeois dress. The canvas has slight tears and requires cleaning. It is presented in a gilded 19th century frame.

Oil on canvas. The scene shows the results of a battle, with survivors providing first aid to the wounded, carrying the bodies of their fallen comrades, and a friar blessing the dying. Officers on horseback count the victims and honor them. The scene is set in an open territory on the banks of a river, with rugged mountain slopes in the background. The rosy atmosphere of a sunset underlines the end of the day, of the battle, of the life lost in battle. The work is presented in a contemporary frame.

Study for Vegetation

Pencil on paper. Signed lower right. Michetti, originally from Abruzzo, studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, where he developed his realistic and naturalistic style. But rural Abruzzo, with its still uncontaminated nature, was always his main source of inspiration. Here is a small study of country vegetation. Framed,

Female Portrait

Oil on canvas. Signed on the right, halfway up the canvas. It is the portrait of a woman in mourning, a young widow, as can be deduced not only from her black dress, but rather from her headdress and especially from the cameo with a male portrait, which she wears hanging from her neck. Achille Zo was a French artist (from Bayonne, a town in the Pyrenees that was culturally influenced by the Basque Country), who despite having repeatedly stayed in Paris and Bordeaux, where he trained artistically, then made several trips to Spain, both to Madrid (in 1856) and to Andalusia (1860), producing for several years works with historical subjects or Spanish genre scenes. At the end of the 1860s, he turned instead to Orientalism. There are also several portraits in his production. The painting proposed here, on the first canvas, is presented in a beautiful contemporary frame from the second half of the 19th century.

Oil on canvas, applied to panel. French School. Signed F. Barthélemy and dated 1876 lower left. The scene is in oriental taste and setting, and suggests the domestic and intellectual education of a young girl (the reference, albeit secular, to the Education of the Virgin is evident!): a young girl, standing at the center of the scene, while intent on embroidery, listens to the teaching of her mother, who is holding some written sheets in her hands; the elderly woman is dressed in oriental dress and reclining on a triclinium, while, behind her, a servant moves the curtain, revealing the background of an imposing classical temple. The scene is characterized by carefully crafted and richly detailed settings, such as the bunch of flowers on the embroidery table, the fabric covering the triclinium on which the mother is reclining; the intimate and domestic atmosphere is underlined by the earthy colours of the palace walls, on which the bright colours of the figures stand out, well lit by the light bursting from outside. The painting is presented in a period frame.

Composed of woodblocked sheets, sewn together and partly colored, with matching figures and texts. The group consists of 23 booklets, of which two in three copies and one in four copies; another couple has the same cover but different contents. The booklets can be considered as "manga" of the nineteenth century: the word "manga" still today can designate many different productions, such as single cartoons, scattered drawings, more elaborate illustrations, comic strips, comic books, as well as animated drawings. Therefore, starting from the assumption that there is no "manga form" but different ways of conceiving objects and graphic forms all denominated with this word, the term manga can be attested in literary and essayistic use in Japan as early as the eighteenth century to indicate, as mentioned above, drawings and sketches. But it is from the first half of the nineteenth century that Katsushika Hokusai's 15 volumes of illustrations, studies, graphic entertainment and detailed bichromatic prints became established, thanks to the progressive publication, starting from 1814. If, on the other hand, we want to give the word the more specific meaning of “stories drawn in sequence”, then the debut must be placed in the second half of the nineteenth century, similarly to what happened in Europe and the United States for comics. The booklets are in good condition.

The Ancient Baptistery of Gravedona

Pencil and watercolor on paper. Signed lower left. Of the same subject but with characters, there is a version on canvas by the Milanese artist, preserved in the civic Raccolta d'arte Museo dell'Ottocento of Villa Belgioioso Bonaparte, in Milan. Luigi Bisi specialized in interior views of churches in Lombardy, with a predilection for the Milan Cathedral. The work is presented in a frame.

Courtship at the Well 1873

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower right. Haier was a Viennese painter and photographer, but lived for a long time in the Czech Republic. His pictorial production includes portraits and many genre scenes, set like this one in the Czech rural environment. We have a seller of jars, transported on the back of his donkey, who entertains himself at a well in amorous conversation with a girl, who in the meantime offers a tuft of grass to the docile beast. The painting is presented in a period frame.

Copper panels decorated with enamels. This is a 19th-century reproduction of the enamelled Cross of Paschal I (817-824), an important staurotheca in embossed and gilded copper, which contained within it minute fragments of the Cross of Christ, and which became part of the Treasure placed by Leo III (795-816) in the oratory called Sancta Sanctorum in the Lateran. The Cross is made up of five panels, arranged in the shape of a Latin cross, on which seven episodes from the life of Jesus are depicted with lively enamel figures. In the upper panel are the Annunciation and the Visitation of Mary; in the centre panel is the Birth of Jesus; on the left is the Flight into Egypt and on the right is the Adoration of the Magi; and finally in the lower arm is the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple and the Baptism of Jesus. The panels are composed on a wooden base and presented in a glass case frame.

Courtship Scene 1887

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower right, with additional inscription "Baden" (place?). The scene shows a young couple in 18th-century folk clothes, sitting on a bench under a flowering tree, along a country path: the boy is making the girl try playing the recorder, a nice courtship device. There are no biographical information about the artist, who is of German origin by name and place indicated. The painting is presented in a period frame.

Mixed technique (pencil, pen, brown ink and white chalk) on paper. Italian school of the early 19th century. The scene represents the meeting between a high priest and a leader: if he is followed by his entire army, with grim and armed soldiers of different ranks, the priest is followed by all the people who praise the winner, while two young women on their knees they offer wreaths of flowers. Behind the scene, the mighty walls with the entrance door to a city, towards which the priest points, almost as if handing it over to the leader. The priest's clothing, in particular the presence of the so-called "Decision" breastplate that he wears, refers to an Israelite priest, and therefore the city could be Jerusalem; instead the clothing of the victorious leader, with the helmet surmounted by two horses, refers to Alexander the Great, who actually conquered the city in 332 BC. The drawing is presented in a carved wooden frame from the late 19th century.

Ludovico il Moro's farewell to his wife..

Mixed media (pencil, pen, brown ink and white chalk) on paper. Italian school of the early 19th century. Ludovico Maria Sforza cries at the tomb of his young wife Beatrice d'Este (1475 -1497); around him the friars of Santa Maria delle Grazie and on his left Bramante and Leonardo. On the short side of the marble canopy of the tomb there is the Sforza coat of arms, with two snakes and two eagles. Il Moro was profoundly shaken by the early death in childbirth of his very young wife Beatrice, his companion in his private but also political life, as well as his husband's, a patron of the artistic geniuses of their court, such as Leonardo da Vinci. and Bramante, authors of many pictorial and architectural works of the Visconti-Sforza court. Various versions of this episode are known, especially from the nineteenth century, from that of 1815 by Giovanni Battista Cigola at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, to that of Alessandro Reati of around 1850. The painting is presented in a carved wooden frame from the late 19th century.

Interior of Stable, 1889

Oil on hardboard. Signed and dated 11-30-1889 lower left. Delleani, who initially painted mainly historical subjects, progressively approached landscape painting "en plein air", especially of the places of his origins, the Piedmontese valleys, characterizing his views with chromatic vibrations and warm brightness. In the last decades of his life, however, he also allowed himself to be involved in the orientalist trend, but then returned to his landscape views, creating above all panels rich in warm colors and suggestive atmospheres. Rarer but equally evocative is his production of interiors, such as this one of a stable, where the animated figures, the sheep, appear as almost indistinct spots of color within an environment played entirely on the luminous effects of a single chromatic range. Restored and protected, the painting is presented in a gilded frame from the early 1900s.

Oil painting on canvas. Bottom right signed Borella and dated 1894. It is probably Rafael Borella (1874 -1953), a painter born and trained in Milan but then moved to Uruguay. His first Italian production includes Venetian and Val d'Aosta landscapes. This painting, which offers a mountain view, with meadows crossed by a stream near which a fisherman sits. The scene could therefore be a youthful production by Borella, suited to him in terms of subject and style. The work is presented in a contemporary frame.

The Nine Muses

Tapestry. The word Euterp appears at the bottom right. The enormous grass juice depicts the nine Muses, female Greek divinities, all sisters, as daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, and having the god Apollo as their guide. They represented the supreme ideal of Art, understood as the truth of the "Everything" or the "eternal magnificence of the divine". Initially considered in a generic way as divinities of song and joyous dances, responsible for putting into music and verse stories such as the origin of the world, the birth of gods and men, the exploits of Zeus, and often depicted accompanied by various musical instruments, starting from the Hellenistic era, all singing and musical expressions were associated with them, including sad and funeral ones, and other arts such as theatre, and each of them was associated with a specific genre of art, so that they could be invoked individually to exercise their inspiration and protection. The word "Euterp"refers to the name of one of them, Euterpe, muse of lyric poetry and music, traditionally depicted with a flute; but the name Euterpe etymologically means "She who cheers" who brings joy, and one can therefore think that the choice of this name to title the tapestry refers to the most ancient function of the Muses, those of bringers of joy through art. In this presentation, the muses appear dancing, dressed in veils and flowering branches; in their hands or placed next to them, instruments or other objects symbolizing the art that they inspire appear (both tragic and comic theatrical masks, the pictorial palette, various musical instruments...). The large painting has signs of wear and humidity stains.